


AK-24/7

by ThisMessIsAPlace (DJFero)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: And mildly graphic animal death, And now there's mildly graphic child death, Backstory, Children abusing children, God these tags make me sound twisted af, Jamie talking out and about his ass, Let's balance them out with Overuse Of The Word Donger, M/M, Mentions of male genital mutilation, OCs as device, Prompts Welcome, Roadrat eventually, Threatening to develop plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-13 03:18:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7960378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJFero/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie wound up sleeping on bare floor in a far corner, having already lost even enough favor to split a cardboard mat with one of the other runts.</p><p>Kid number twenty one was going to have a rough time of it. But to be fair, they were all having a rough time of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drive It Like You Killed For It

**Author's Note:**

> Original character POV for a bit but I assure you, the story isn't about him. He's just a convenient narrator.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie makes a first impression.
> 
> Mako makes a last one.

They ran out of the little yoga mats he'd found at a burnt out gym three weeks ago (the free weights were the first thing to go. Didn't know those were a hot commodity. Didn't want to know what uses people had cooked up for them). He'd found six.

Then he'd lucked out and found some musty blankets that had been hidden under overturned shelving, overlooked by the looters when they wrecked the thrift store. They made little nests, good for laying on, but they'd need to be reallocated when winter came. It was warm enough right now no one wanted a blanket over them, though, so bedding they became.

After those were occupied he'd pulled apart a brick of crushed cardboard boxes -- mostly unburnt -- found stacked behind a superstore. The biggest, flattest pieces he could find were re-stacked three deep and stitched together with zip ties. That only made four more mats, since finding big flat pieces was luck of the draw after some stockroom employee had put them all through a compactor. (He'd done that job once, a couple summers ago, and it had never really occurred to him to consider it a waste of resources. It was just trash back then.)

That made fourteen beds, all told, for twenty kids. Twenty one, now.

It was troubling to watch how sleeping real estate changed hands between the children. Somewhere in their tiny heads, with their homes and families all gone, survival of the fittest had asserted itself like an instinct. First pick for preference had the biggest and toughest kids on the foam mats and the blankets, unless the small ones were scrappy enough to win a fight over it. You could tell who was lowest on the burgeoning food chain by who was forced to go halves on a cardboard mat.

Kid number twenty one gazed over the minefield of sleeping bodies with an inscrutable expression. Boy or girl, Ben couldn't tell under the soot and rags and shaggy burnt hair, though he wasn't particularly invested in the answer. He'd asked for a name, and after much thought, “Jamie?” was offered (which wasn't much of a clue) with a sort of questioning noise at the end like the kid wasn't too sure.

Ben watched Jamie, promising himself this kid was the last one. Meant to bring home more canned goods and got another mouth to feed instead. After a great deal of pondering Jamie crossed the room, stepping over other kids, aiming his -- her? -- little feet toward a cozy looking nest of quilts whose sole occupant was the biggest, meatiest girl of the bunch.

He didn't offer any warning or instruction; he didn't have control over the hierarchy the kids had, and sooner or later Jamie would have to figure it out. Whatever peacekeeping Ben did only lasted as long as he was in earshot and he knew it. Maddie was a heavy sleeper, so she might not even notice she had a bunk buddy until evening. Jamie might just get a few hours rest before losing baby teeth for the presumption.

She didn't make it that far. (Ben assumed “she” until proven otherwise with the iffy ones, no clue why.) Jamie tripped, graceful as shit, over someone's face, landed on someone else's ankle, and it took about five seconds from that point for a scuffle to break out that rapidly woke more than half the others. Some of them had just gotten off watch rotation, some of them didn't have long to sleep until it was their turn. Ben broke it up quickly enough, but the damage was done.

Jamie wound up sleeping on bare floor in a far corner, having already lost even enough favor to split a cardboard mat with one of the other runts.

Ben put it out of his mind as he settled down on the single mattress puberty afforded him by default. Kid number twenty one was going to have a rough time of it. But to be fair, they were all having a rough time of it.

* * *

 

 

A servo wasn't exactly an ideal home for a pack of kids, but they weren't exactly spoiled for choice either. Ben liked it because it was defensible after a bit of work. (His father's voice in his head noted choke points and vantage points and potential killing floors. Ben didn't miss the bastard, but some days he almost wished he was here. Instead he relied on the  _ memory _ of the old man's paranoia.)

As of reaching the Twenty One Kids milestone (which meant Ben had more children than he had birthdays, hooray) he'd already slapped together guard posts from metal shelving and wood pallets and placed them strategically around the flat roof, accessible from a hole he'd made in the ceiling and a rope ladder tied together from nylon and twine. His current project was shoring up the cooler. It was a big L-shape around the back of the store that gave a view of everything except behind the sales counter, with the added benefit that even with the power permanently shut off, the insulation would keep it cool in summer and warm in winter. Naturally, that was where they slept.

He'd gutted the defunct A/C for parts he'd find a use for later, and put the kids to work tearing apart the shelves for screws to secure most of the doors and sheets of metal to reinforce them.

“Maddie knows the process, so you'll do what she says.” Ben grabbed Jamie (who he'd been assured was a boy this evening, and he wasn't going to argue) by the chin and dragged his face back around to look at him again. Jamie had an interested look in his eyes, and he’d had it as soon as he'd woken up to the other kids working screws out and stacking metal slats on the ground. Despite that, twice already Ben had watched his big eyes go unfocused and slowly drift away from his face while he was talking.

Ben had the boy pegged for a space cadet already, moreso than kids his age generally were. Maybe something was wrong with him. But he had two arms and two legs, so even if he was itty bitty and even if his head wasn't screwed on straight, he was going to earn his keep like everyone else.

Maybe just… not on guard duty.

“Keep your head down and listen to the bigger kids. They tell you to do something, hop to it. We all wanna stay alive, we don't have time to fuck around,” Ben said. He snapped his fingers in front of Jamie’s face to bring him around again. “Jamie. You hear me?”

“Uh huh.”

“You sure look like you didn't hear me.”

“Nuh uh!”

“What did I say?”

Jamie rocked on his heels for a moment, looking betrayed by the pop quiz. His mouth moved silently, and he broke into a smile that was a tooth short of the one he'd given Ben last morning. “No fucking around,” he announced, looking pleased with himself.

“Cool. Get to work then.”

Jamie waddled off to approach Maddie for instructions. She was a big girl in every dimension (which gave her authority over the smaller kids) and she must have been treated like a princess by her parents (which gave her the idea she was entitled to it). Ben could respect that. She was bright, she was tough, she picked up on new ideas quickly, and she listened to him, so he didn't have any objections to her making herself his lieutenant. She'd keep the show running while he was away, so it didn't matter much to him that she was a Grade A Bitch for being only ten.

She'd probably get worse as she got older, but she had the kind of balls that would ensure she  _ got older. _ Ben liked her odds more than the others’.

Because Jamie’d come short of cuddling up to her, and she'd slept through the row he'd brought down on himself, Maddie didn't have much to build from as personal opinions went. Didn't mean she didn't have an impression of him already. She looked at the ragged little shit like he legitimately smelled of shit when he came in range of her, and she started giving him orders at once.

Ben wasn’t out the door before he heard a smack and a yelp.

“Pay attention when I'm talking to you!”

He didn't break stride. The kid would learn eventually, or he wouldn't. Ben had chores of his own to worry about.

* * *

 

It was stupid to do when he had to cross open ground on the way home, but Ben hadn't been able to leave the door behind. He'd found it attached to a walk-in freezer in an old diner and popped it off its hinges. Once they got the cooler reinforced they could start on the big windows on the storefront, and re-fit the door frame to hold this baby: heavy, steel, secure. But that meant lugging it three miles back to the servo, strapped to his back so it wouldn't scrape the ground and announce his position. He'd  _ meant _ to get food and water. He did, too, and had to wear the old army duffel bag off his front.

It was a slow walk.

He'd mostly gotten himself and the kids on a nocturnal schedule. Night was when he would be harder to see on supply runs, and he wouldn't sweat his life out his ass crack. But any raiders and looters clever enough to have lived this long would be on the same schedule. Day meant fewer people to worry about but you could hardly get anything done.

He should have come back for the door later, but he couldn't stand the idea of someone else finding it and fitting it to their own home base -- or as a bulldozing addition on their truck, or whatever those bogans were doing now to make murder more efficient.

Somewhere he heard an engine. More than one. Shit.

He ran as low as he could while weighted down, aimed at a mound of rubble that might have been a café once, judging by the sign. The good thing about the end of the world was you could hear an engine for miles without other noise in between, and you didn't get night blind under the stars without artificial light on every corner. He found a gap between a teetering wall and a mound of rubble and tossed his duffel into it, then crouched down as far as he could. The door lashed to his back hid him, just another piece of detritus resting on the pile. He felt like a turtle in its shell. If he twisted just right, shotgun across his lap, he could see a bit of the street behind him through the gap.

It took a while for them to pass through, and he almost thought they wouldn't, but this strip was one of the more intact streets in at least five miles any direction. If they were near it, they were bound to check it out, and they did. It was a little motorcade, little more in terms of numbers more than anything; they had an eighteen wheeler, two cars, a truck, a motorbike. The big truck had a trailer hitched to the back, but the top had peeled off like a sardine can and left twisted metal behind. He'd bet they lived in there, and nomads generally meant trouble. They didn't mean to put down roots, but they'd dig up anyone else's when they got hungry.

They passed him by half a block, going the way he'd just come from, but the roar died down and Ben knew they'd stopped. The shotgun stock felt slick in his hands, but it was just sweat. He set it down to wipe his palms on his jeans, and very carefully began untying the ropes that secured the door to him.

They were talking, but he couldn't make out much over the idling engines, until they started coming closer. Someone had dismounted their vehicle. He could hear rumbling footsteps on the shattered pavement.

“--used to get coffee here with my friends,” a man chuckled, but he didn't sound like he really thought it was funny. “Sure they're still around somewhere. In pieces, I expect, so… you know. Around  _ everywhere _ .You lived nearby, didn't you say? Any old haunts?”

There was a silence. He could hear them breathing. The building next to Ben had mostly collapsed into itself, full of brick and little else. Any looting they wanted to do would require a great deal more work than the score was probably worth. An hour of moving bricks to find an old coffee tin. He doubted they were after anything here. Maybe they just stopped for the memories.

“Theater down the street.” The answer boomed, even though it wasn't spoken loudly. It was almost hard to distinguish the words at first; with the engine noises in the background especially, a sound that low-pitched was more felt than heard. Whoever produced it must have been a giant. From this angle Ben only had shadows to go by, and they were drawn out long, red and thin by tail lights.

“Yeah? You take the missus there? Didn't strike me as a fan of the arts. What'd you go see?” They both sounded like big men, but this one, who would probably dwarf Ben, became sort of comically emasculated by his companion.

“Faust.”

“Heard the name before, I think. What's it about?”

A long, thoughtful pause. Ben's back already ached from carrying his load, and now the crouch wasn't doing it  _ or _ his calves any favors. He curled his fingers around his gun very carefully, and lifted it back into his lap a centimeter at a time.

“The whole damn world,” the giant finally answered.

“Mm. Take your word for it, mate.”

They were quiet for a minute, and the fear that they'd caught on to the strangeness of the door, or heard him somehow, began creeping up Ben's spine in counterpoint to the sweat crawling down it. He had enough shells to feel comfortable taking them both out if he got the drop on them, but he didn't know how many friends they had. Too many to like his chances in a firefight. If he had to shoot, he had to run, immediately, leave everything else behind. Move from cover to cover, shake them, and find somewhere to hide. Pray they gave up searching and moved on. He might have to wait out the day before heading back to the servo; too much open ground to cross once he'd alerted them, and he couldn't lead them back to the kids.

“Alright Mako, I'll bite. You didn't come out here to hold my hand and look at the stars.” A shuffle of feet. Ben held the shotgun steady, pointed toward where he guessed, from their shadows, the two men must have been standing on the other side of the door. If they pulled it aside, he'd blast them and run. If they sounded like they were making sudden movements, he'd shoulder the door over and blast them, then run. “This about that girl out by Birdsville?”

“Naw. Don't give a shit. Wanted something.”

“O-kay. Sure thing, big fella. What're you asking for?”

“Your chopper.”

The smaller man snorted. “You kiddin’? My Black Betty? You better have a damn good offer.”

“Sure.” Ben jerked at the gun report; so near, and so sudden, it battered his ears and sent his spine straight. He brushed his back against the door and went still. Had he shifted it? He couldn't tell if he'd shifted it.

“Bullet.”

More shuffling behind him, a series of clicks he recognized as a magazine: removed, checked, slid back home. Taking his buddy's gun off the warm body. Ben could just make out a rivulet of blood trickling under the door.

“Told you to leave 'er alone,” the giant -- Mako -- growled. It was barely above a whisper, but he must have been bent near the ground; his voice vibrated the door against Ben's back. “Piece of shit.

“Animals, all of us.”

He stomped away. Ben stayed still and made peace with the warm blood coating his shoes and soaking into the knees of his jeans as the man argued with the rest of his crew. He hadn't made a secret of what he did. Didn't sound like they fully appreciated it, but no more shots were fired. Eventually the engines roared to life -- someone let rip his new chopper a few times, getting a feel for the roar of it. Slowly they rolled away.

They were stopping again a few places down the road, picking through what loot was left. It felt like hours before they left for good, engines fading out in the distance. Ben re-secured the damn door to his back and looped the strap of his duffel bag around his neck again before he pushed carefully to his feet. He grunted when the soreness in his calves spiked before ebbing.

He was right, the dead man was big. His killer must have been beyond belief. Ben stepped over him and began the slow trudge back towards the servo. If he was lucky, he'd make it by dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drabbles on a linear timeline. I legit have no end game here, so prompts for scenes I should explore are way way way more than welcome. Help me please i have no idea what the shit I'm doing I just started writing without a plan??


	2. Tetris Tile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie finds his place but doesn't fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter:
> 
> Mentions of child abuse (perpetrated by other children)
> 
> Somewhat graphic animal death
> 
> Mentions of child death
> 
> Mentions of male genital mutilation
> 
> I swear this isn't as dark as it sounds, I wrote the word "donger" in dialogue at least five times and giggled the whole way.
> 
> I just figure it's polite to cover the bases.

Jamie’s little fingers were quick with tools, and he liked putting things together. Mostly he liked screwing around with circuit boards and nuts and bolts and scraps of diamond plate steel. He couldn't make shit that was useful, but he fit pieces together just to do it. Ben sometimes came back from supply runs and found him sitting alone, messing with bits and bobs outside the front door (it sure looked nice once he'd installed it).

This morning he had a black eye. Ben wasn't thrilled to see it, but he couldn't say he was shocked.

The thing was, a year into his stay and there was still next to nothing Jamie could do that he didn't just wind up underfoot. He was too tiny to lift shit on his own. He was slow to pick up on the marketable skills Ben taught, like weaving rope or cooking dinner or building fortifications. They'd learned fairly quick not to trust him with fire. He was clumsy and dropped shit on people's toes or knocked them in the head with tools. He had the approximate attention span of a dead goldfish, and you could call his hearing selective if you really wanted to be generous about it.

Jamie was eager to try anything that put his hands to work, but he shit up just about everything he touched.

The kids had gotten into a rhythm. Ben gave them chore rotations, training homework, building plans for shoring up defenses. They knew what needed doing and as a team they got better and better at doing it each day. They were becoming a finely tuned machine, and they had no tolerance for a weak link. Jamie was one of the youngest, but even other kids his age were picking up trades. Lewis could sew like the dickens and Ben had only just recently gotten him to stop shitting in his trousers.

Tina had started suggesting they hogtie Jamie and string him upside-down over the front door for the buzzards, warn looters off with his carcass. (Tina was, admittedly, _ a little fucked up. _ )

They might have been frustrated because they didn't really have a lot of time to play and just be kids. Sleep was a commodity with watch duty and the occasional abrupt bout of crying or screaming in the dead of afternoon. Combine all that with the limited patience children had in general, and Jamie's virtual uselessness made him a prime punching bag.

They might not have been so rough on him if he wasn't such a talker to boot.

“Did you shoot anybody?” He pronounced it 'thoot’. Ben wasn't sure if it was a childhood speech impediment or the missing front teeth. He had the courtesy to wave hello before he asked, but barely; his arm was sort of halfway into the air before his mouth opened. “Do you shoot a lot of people? Your gun is big, when do I get to shoot a gun, Maddie gets a gun when you're gone and it is pretty.”

He said 'pitty’ and it would be adorable if he weren't a headache. “She showed me it and she says she will make me take a dirt nap if I don't shut up, what is a dirt nap, did you find any spinach--”

And on, and on.

Ben didn't really bother trying to answer any of the questions. It'd be like trying to catch the drip of a leaky ceiling when the entire Murrumbidgee was pouring in under your door. He made a noise of acknowledgment and waved up to the lookouts, then walked past to yank the door open. It didn't give.

Jamie went conspicuously quiet. Ben looked at him. “Why am I locked out?”

The boy said nothing, so Ben backpedalled a few steps until he could see Natalie stationed over the front entrance. “Nat. Why am I locked out?” he demanded flatly.

“Oh! Sorry Ben. Jamie's been exiled.”

Ben frowned at her, then at Jamie. “Jamie?”

“Uh huh?”

“Why are you exiled?”

Jamie shrugged noncommittally. “Iunno.”

With a sigh, Ben dropped his duffel bag on the sidewalk and crouched down in front of the boy. “Not buying it. Wanna try again?”

Jamie mulled it over. He was giving it some real thought. Probably he had no clue and had just accepted that his only crime was Being Jamie. Which, it probably was. Some days that was more than enough. He zoned out while he was thinking about it, and Ben flicked his pointy nose none-too-gently to bring him back to this dimension.

Rubbing his nose, Jamie perked up as if he'd had an epiphany. “I tried to make something,” was the slow trickle that began an inevitable flood. “It has a spring and it goes WHAP and jumps like  _ nothing  _ because we had one, I found it under the old counter but it rusted out and I liked it, it had a mouse on it, I like mouses, they--”

Ben squinted. “A mousetrap?”

“Yeah!”

This could only have gone well. “What happened with the mousetrap?”

“I made it and then I put it in the dunny and Frankie got his donger caught in it--” Ben felt his whole body cringe in sympathy, but Jamie didn't seem to notice, “--it was real funny, how did his donger get caught in it, it looked like a bald mouse and he screamed like nothing, and--”

Ben held up a hand and Jamie shut his mouth obediently, rocking on his toes. He had too many questions, (how  _ did _ Frankie get his junk caught in it?) so he just went with “Why the fuck did you put it in the shithouse?”

“To catch mouses?”

Naturally.

“Jonah says I'm a no-hoper. Dumb as shit an’ half as useful.”

Ben grunted. “Jonah’s twelve and he still pisses on his mat six days of the week. But a man's donger should be safe in his own dunny.” He looked Jamie over. The boy had barely survived winter. He'd taken up sleepwalking, which sometimes escalated to eerie bouts of sleep- _ screaming  _ he couldn't remember later, standing in the middle of the cooler shrieking nonsense and waking everyone up in a terror.

Even after the windfall of three air mattresses had caused the bedding to be redistributed, Jamie alone still slept on bare tiles. The only luck he came by was not getting pushed out to the storage room for his sleep habits, where he couldn't even bask in secondhand body heat. Ben had considered letting the kid sleep on his mattress with him out of pity, but that would make things worse. Useless,  _ and  _ Ben's favorite? It would hurt him more than it helped.

“You said you made the mousetrap yourself?”

“Uh huh.”

“How?”

Jamie shrugged. “Iunno. I put pieces together.”

“Just like that, huh?” Ben scratched his chin. He'd finally started growing some real good stubble on it, which would have made him proud once, but after more than a year of shepherding kids he just felt like he was getting old. At this rate he was aging ten to one, probably. “Do we still have it?” He thought about it and winced. “Does  _ Frankie  _ still have it?” he added with a sense of dread.

Jamie nodded rapidly, then switched gears too quickly to shaking his head ‘no,’ and made himself dizzy. “Nuh uh, Trisha got it off him. He was hollerin’ like  _ nothin’. _ ”

Ben nodded and picked up his duffel. He pounded on the door. “Lemme in, you shits.”

A series of clicks and clunks later, and Maddie was holding the door open for him. She was always happy to see Ben, but her expression turned sour when she spotted Jamie hanging off his trouser leg. Probably disappointed a dingo hadn't eaten him yet. She looked up at Ben. “He's exiled,” Maddie informed him matter-of-factly.

“So I'm told,” Ben agreed.

“He  _ mutilated  _ Frankie's donger.”

“He’s admitted to his crimes,” Ben sighed. “Frankie doesn't even know what his donger’s for yet, he's got time to heal up.” He hoped. He hadn't seen the damage yet and he really didn't want to. The thought made him queasy. Trisha was handy with first aid, had picked up all the field medicine he knew plus a bit from the still-legible books he'd found. He was confident she could handle it with only the requisite minimum of giggling. “I'm un-exiling Jamie. He stays until  _ I  _ say he doesn’t. We clear?”

“Can we put him on a leash when you're gone?”

“I'll think about it. Where's the trap he made?”

Ben pushed inside, Jamie trailing after him like a persistent fart. Maddie snapped her fingers, a habit she'd picked up from Ben and made regal, and one of the smaller kids, Tina, scuttled off to the closet they'd turned into an infirmary. She came back with a wicked looking contraption in her hands and a wickeder grin. “Still got blood on it,” she told Ben cheerfully as she handed it over.

“Oh. Charming.” He inspected the mousetrap, aware that several pairs of eyes were on him. Jamie was staring, bottom lip between his teeth and suppressing a smile while he twisted his fingers in the hammer loop on Ben's jeans. He was watching like Ben was appraising a piece of macaroni art, hoping for a 'good job.' Tina had a similar look; she was ambivalent at best towards Jamie, but she approved of his invention.

Maddie was inscrutable. She crossed her arms and waited.

The mousetrap was simple but it got the job done, clearly. A scrap of diamond plate steel with twisted wire soldered on (who the hell let him sneak off with the soldering iron?). It looked…  _ mean _ . Repurposed barbed wire and toothy alligator clips for the trigger.

It also looked new; Jamie said the one he'd found under the counter was rusted out, and it looked like he hadn't used any of its parts in the construction of his own. He'd had a reference for the build but this thing barely resembled a traditional mousetrap except in its function.

Ben crouched down and laid the trap on the floor. Very carefully, he set the mechanism, then pulled a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket that he used to mark his map. When he poked the trigger with the pen, it leapt off the floor and sprang shut like lightning, startling everyone. Tina giggled.

(How the fuck did Frankie get his junk in it? Some questions were best left unanswered.)

Ben looked up at Jamie, who was grinning like a shot fox. “Might be onto something here. If I get you parts, you think you can trap something bigger than Frankie's donger?”

“Yeah!” Jamie bounced on his toes, lit up like a firecracker at the idea. “I seen rabbits out in the back lot and I like them, they are  _ so fluffy _ and I want one, I could make a box that--”

Ben stemmed another flood by holding up his hand. “Cool. Okay. I'll give you a fair go.” He prodded Jamie roughly in the ribs, leaning in so the boy was forced to look at the grim set of his face and little else. “Your traps bite anyone around here again, though, and you're out on your ass. Do you understand?”

Jamie nodded rapidly and let off an automatic “uh huh” of agreement, but it wasn't good enough. Ben caught him by the jaw and held his face still in a firm grip that startled a sense of gravity into the boy.

“'Uh huh’ ain't gonna cut it, Jamie-boy. I wanna hear you say it.”

“Uh h--” Ben shook him and he blinked. “No more trapping kids.”

“Or?” Ben prompted.

“Orrrrrr… or I'm out on my ass.”

Ben nodded and made Jamie nod with him. Then he relinquished his hold and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Now go put my soldering iron the fuck back where you found it and get ready for dinner.”

Jamie scampered off to do as he was told, and Tina grabbed the strap of the duffle bag and hauled it off to storage to put his loot away. Maddie remained, frowning at Ben.

“He's gonna make more trouble.”

Ben shrugged. “Too right. But we mighta found something he's halfway good at.”

“What if it's  _ your  _ donger next?” Maddie said it too seriously. Ben mighta laughed if he weren't wincing and crossing his legs.

“Then Tina strings him up as buzzard bait.”

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


True to his word, Jamie built another trap with the scrap Ben allotted him, and didn't get any kids caught in it. Then again, with Frankie’s bad limp as a cautionary tale, everyone generally gave Jamie a wide berth when he was working, as if whatever he was making would explode if they looked at it funny. It afforded Jamie a kind of freedom from bullying he hadn't had in a while, at least when he had his tools in hand. He didn't seem to notice his luck on that front; he worked with a kind of single-minded focus he spared nothing else.

Frankie had spent a couple days laid up in the infirmary where Trisha had dragged him, forbidden from moving, so his blanket nest was free. Jamie wordlessly laid claim to it while the bigger boy was away. It was sketchy for a minute when Jamie first flopped down to sleep. A couple of kids who'd been on cardboard mats or sharing real estate with a buddy looked like they wanted to run him off and take the blankets for themselves, but no one stepped up. Suddenly Jamie was just that little bit dangerous, and in the unwritten law that governed who moved up to a better spot, he'd technically earned Frankie's digs fair and square.

Ben wondered a while if the fiasco had really been an accident. But Jamie was flaky and guileless; building the trap and setting it without losing fingers was a kind of cleverness he wouldn't have expected from the kid, but using it on another boy with intent? Planning it out well enough to make it work? Doubtful. Aside from Frankie being a prick to him, as far as Ben knew Jamie didn't have the motive to turn so uncharacteristically Machiavellian.

It took the better part of a week and a lot of false starts before Jamie declared his second trap complete, his hands bandaged a dozen times over from smashing his fingers and cutting himself in sharp metal. He'd made a box of chicken wire with flaps of perforated aluminum inside. A hair-trigger mechanism on the floor of the device tripped a spring and a small pulley, slamming the aluminum doors shut in the blink of an eye. A rock tossed onto the trigger plate was used to demonstrate the function, and Ben gave him the green light to take a bit of food to bait the trap and leave it out back for the rabbits.

That day a scream from the lookout on the rear wall woke Ben, and he went out with his shotgun loaded only to find it was the trap that had startled her. A feral dog was caught in it up to its shoulders. Judging by bone structure and what the radiation and mange had spared of its short fur, it looked like a pit bull mix.

Jamie's rabbit trap had peeled its skin back like a loose, wet tarp from snout to flank, and snapped shut three inches deep in its jugular.

The lookout was crying but Ben shushed her and told her to swap posts with whoever was on the front door if she couldn't stomach it. Jamie stood framed in the back door, flanked by Jonah and Natalie. They stared with wide eyes at the mess he'd made.

Ben said nothing. He didn't want to tell the kid he'd done a good job because, frankly, a six- or seven-year-old who could build a trap from scraps, a trap that damn near decapitated a dog twice his weight, probably shouldn't be encouraged.

He shouldn't be discouraged, either, because whether the softer-hearted kids among them liked it or not, Jamie had just scored them a decent supper. He'd done something beyond impressive for his size and age and Ben couldn't really fault him for it. It was useful. He had to make peace with the fact that work like this would be useful again, even if a child had to do it.

This was the world they lived in, thanks to those cunts in the ALF.

So Ben silently went to work prying the dog out of the trap, its head lolling grotesquely once it was free. Jamie watched him skin and gut it on the spot, vibrating anxiously like he was awaiting praise or punishment, and he got neither. Hopefully he'd gather that he hadn't done wrong, per se, but Ben wasn't happy about it in any case.

Ben didn't get back to sleep that day. He butchered the dog in the hot sun and started a fire in the clay oven they'd built against the back wall. They didn't have any way to refrigerate the meat, so it needed to be cooked before it spoiled. He’d look for salt on his next run. Hadn't had much use for it, with most of their food coming from dented cans and foil packs, but if they could reliably catch meat now they should salt and preserve it. He knew how to do that, and how to smoke it or sun it dry. Some of the thousand things his father had taught him about survival back when he hadn't actually needed it. They could store meat for months and make a good living off it.

He stored chunks of pulled pit meat in resealable coffee tins, buried the bones, and scoured the jagged trap with sand to get the gore off. With Jamie's help he strung up new bait and reset the mechanism. By the time he was done with everything the sun was setting and the other kids were awake. The story had spread like wildfire when the watch shifts changed, and faces were grim when Ben passed around their roasted dinner.

He was surprised no one raised a fuss to the meat. Eyed it funny, maybe, or tried not to look at it too hard. Teared up a bit here and there as they chewed slowly. But nobody said a damn thing because they were hungry. They were always hungry.

Jamie watched their faces, wide eyed, and ate without hesitation.

* * *

  
  


Frankie died a few days later of infection.

No one bullied Jamie again.

 

 

* * *

  
At night they could see lights in the distance, consistent lights up on the ridge. A town was coming together. The only read Ben could get on its inhabitants was that since they started sticking around and building up the rubble, raider motorcades rumbled through more often. They were a bit isolated out here, a few clicks down the main highway, away from any of the intact strips that might still be lootable -- the ones Ben went out to scavenge -- but a fortified servo standing alone still got spotted. They'd lost two more kids defending their home, gained a third they almost lost again to dehydration shortly after she stumbled on them, and scored an ATV off the man who'd shot and killed Jonah.

It had been a rough couple of years. Jamie's ideas for trapping their perimeter weren't without merit, but it needed to be done carefully.

“The rails won’t stand out against the metal.” Jamie splayed his fingers against the scrap layered over the front windows. “We bolt it all down so it looks like they're just bracing the window.”

Ben frowned at the wrinkled notebook paper in his hands. Jamie's notes were chicken scratches, some of the letters backwards and half the words spelled out as phonetically as made sense to him. ('Alyoominyum???’ like even he wasn't sure, and he bloody shouldn't be.) The diagrams weren't much more legible. “What's the trigger mechanism?” he asked, mostly to play devil's advocate, because he already had a feeling this idea was gonna get a resounding 'no.’

“Trip wire across the doorway. They snap it and FWOOSH-SPLAT- _ ARGH!! _ ” Jamie punched his fist into his palm, looking pleased with himself. “ _ Raider kabobs.  _ Or, one kabob, because there wouldn't be room for two people going through at once. But once the spikes slide out they stay out, so the bad guy is stuck on 'em and blocking the rest of them getting through.”

He stepped away from the wall and looked around. “We set up that perimeter fence you were talking about and hook the gates on a pulley, we can slam 'em shut and make a killing floor like you said. They can't get in, they can't get out, they can't take cover. Kids on the roof wouldn't even need to  _ aim,  _ they could just spray and--”

“So what happens the first time a kid goes out to check your rabbit traps and forgets to step over the tripwire?” Ben asked blandly, and glanced up from the schematics to watch the gears grind to a halt between Jamie’s ears. Two years had given him a few more inches and the ability to punctuate his thoughts and string them together more or less coherently, but he was still, tragically, Jamie. “What happens the first time  _ I _ come home tired from a supply run and forget to step over it? What happens when it gets weathered or rats chew it, and someone steps over but it snaps and skewers them any-fucking-way--”

“So we put up signs and put a maintenance detail on it. Check for weathering every sundown!” Jamie bared his teeth in frustration. He didn't like the line of questioning. He didn't like being doubted. More and more he became aware that he had a natural mechanical proficiency even Ben couldn't match, and it chafed to not be trusted to do what he felt he knew best.

“And you're gonna train everyone to disarm and repair it without accidentally shooting an aluminium spike through their ear?” Ben folded up the schematic and leaned down to look Jamie in the eye. He got in his space so he could fit a wrench in those turning gears and keep them caught. “You’re gonna teach them all, one by one, and make sure they understand? Lewis barely follows anything that's not sewing, cooking, and dinosaurs. What are you going to do to keep Lewis safe? What are you going to do to make him understand how this works and how important it is?”

“She'll be right! Get off my dick, ya shit-gobbler--”

Ben's knuckles caught the shell of Jamie's ear when he backhanded him, and the boy yelped and tumbled on his ass. He clutched the side of his head, teary-eyed.

Ben stared down at him. “Get up.”

Jamie sniffed and shoved up to his feet. He glared up at Ben, maybe meant to look pissed but ended up petulant. His ear was red and his cheek was pink, but he wasn't badly hurt. Doing worse had crossed Ben's mind a time or two, but he didn't have the heart. A withering look of disappointment went a long way, or a sharp rap over the head for shock and embarrassment. Jamie had a hard head.

“Half your traps don't work as advertised the first time,” Ben held up a hand to forestall the argument he could see brewing in Jamie's eyes. “They do the job and that's what matters. This time we're talking about trapping a door our own people use. Any surprises and we've got another Frankie.  _ Worse _ than Frankie. Do you understand?”

“How long you gonna hold that over my head?” Jamie mumbled.

Ben shrugged. “Iunno. How long ‘til you fuckin’ learn from it?”

They stared at each other a long time.

Jamie had been quiet for days after Ben put Frankie out in the back lot under a little cairn. He hadn't cried. Some kids cried, even ones who hadn’t much liked the boy. It was their parents and brothers and sisters all over again, and it was a shock to lose someone they'd eaten, worked, played, prayed, and slept beside for over a year.

Some kids just moved on, because it was like their parents and brothers and sisters all over again; they didn't have tears left to spare for another death.

Jamie didn't quite do either. He was complicit, and Ben thought maybe a part of him understood the gravity of that and regretted it. The rest of him never quite figured out what to think, so it turned away, refocused on something else like it hadn't happened. No one talked to him anymore unless they had to, so there was only Ben to remind him when he needed reminding.

“Something like that happens again, you're worse than out on your ass. I need you to understand that.” He'd always talked to them like they were adults and didn't know if that helped or hurt things, but he couldn't change it now. He wouldn't. Jamie was on thinner ice than anyone and had been since he'd arrived. “Your accidents kill another person, and what happens to you will be absolutely on purpose.”

Jamie glared at his feet, so Ben crouched down to get back in his line of sight. “I coulda done a lot better for myself out here. I picked up strays instead. I kept you alive with meals and water and space I coulda saved for myself. Broke my back to keep us well off on all of the above.”

He sounded self-righteous. Jamie glowered harder and Ben knew it sounded like he was holding all he'd done over Jamie's head like a debt. That wasn't how it was meant to work.

He dug his thumb into his temple and sighed. “I'm not asking to be canonized for it. I'm asking you to see that I did it for a reason. I fucking care about you bastards. All of you. I've lost enough. I won't lose more. You kill another kid and I lose two, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Don't do that to me, Jamie. I've dug three tiny graves and it's three too many. I need you to stay alive and try to keep everyone else alive too.”

“They wouldn't do it for  _ me. _ ” Jamie looked at him with eyes run ragged from two years feeling like a ghost among the living.

“They would.” Ben wasn't sure but he was… mostly confident. Maybe if he said it again he'd feel more certain. “They  _ would. _ ‘Cause they remember how they ate before your traps. They need you and they know it, Jamie. They just don't  _ like _ you.”

Maybe he could have not said the last bit. Jamie was taking deep consideration of his bare feet again. Ben had never been suited to raising kids, never claimed to be. He was just good at keeping them alive.

“We can fix that. We'll work on it.”

Jamie toed a piece of broken concrete across the cracked ground. “How?” he asked flatly.

Ben shrugged. “They like me, and I ain't even all that nice. We’ll work on it. And we'll work on your spike trap, but I want  _ thorough  _ testing before it's installed. We don't leave room for error. But it's a good idea. We'll see what we can do. Okay?”

Jamie nodded. “Okay.”

Ben stood and cracked his neck. The sun was fully down, and he had to get on the road if he wanted to make it back and forth from the river before it came back up again. He ruffled Jamie's hair, and handed his schematics back to him. “We'll talk more when I get back.”

Jamie nodded and watched Ben load up the ATV for his supply run, diagrams clutched in his hands like a safety blanket. He waved goodbye as Ben pulled out of the lot, and Ben nodded at him, but didn't wave back. He wasn't in the habit of goodbyes.

Jamie watched him go until he couldn't see the little dust cloud in the dark anymore, and went back inside to tinker with the rails he'd designed until dawn.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Ben never came back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I've set a record for most instances of the word "donger" in one fanfic chapter that WASN'T crack, I want this achievement etched on my grave for posterity.
> 
> Thanks to Suzanne for the prompt of Jamie outwitting the other kids! I'm not sure if this is what you meant but it kinda took on a life of its own. Not sure about the pacing, but I wanted to end the Saga of Ben to move into the next phase of Jamie's life... and possibly his POV now that he's older!
> 
> EDIT: If you read this when it said something about Ben going to the rubber, forgive me, I meant fucking river, do yOU HEAR me, predictive text, I mEANT RIVER.
> 
> I wrote all of this on my phone.


	3. A Letter To Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter half-buried in the bush, its addressee's name burnt out.

Dear  ~~**XXXX**~~ ,

 

I killed a man today.

I'm not sure why I'm committing that to paper like it means anything. I think if I could trace when it stopped  ~~ meaning something I'd find when I stopped deserving you. ~~

It goes like this: first it was for mankind, then it was for our home, then it was because I was mad as hell. Then we made hell a place on earth, and I did it just to stay alive.

Now I do it because it’s Tuesday and there’s nothing better to do.

I read that back to myself ten times and didn't feel anything.

~~ It was when I was mad. That's when it stopped meaning anything. I lost you before the blast took you. You didn't deserve that, but I deserve this. ~~

A friend said he'd see his family on the other side. (I killed him too.) I don't know if that's true. I won't go where you went. I don't want to.

I don't want to see you again.

~~ I miss you. ~~

If I were a better man I'd put myself out of everyone's misery. I don't want to.

I haven't been a better man in a long time.

I'm alive out of spite.

~~ I'm done missing you. ~~

 

- ~~Mako~~

**Roadhog**

* * *

  
  
  


It was the hundredth letter he'd written.

  
It was the last letter he wrote.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blizzard: Here's a hilarious joke character we didn't take seriously, but with a vague, tragic backstory.
> 
> Me: Yes good. Allow me to take him ENTIRELY TOO SERIOUSLY.
> 
> In other news, I realized that some of the themes in this (and possibly some stylistic tics I unthinkingly absorbed from hours with my nose in their work) are probably owing to my near-fanatical following of [Raised In A Barn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7671217) by WildeShade and [Swallow The Sun](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7233907) by Wenzel. 
> 
> If you haven't read them you should. If you have and you didn't leave a comment, please go do that! I too fall prey to the weird aversion to commenting (mostly because I don't feel like I have anything clever to say) but even if it's just "great chapter" or "thanks for sharing this" it feels real good to get those messages.
> 
> WildeShade also has a tip jar linked in their end notes so if you have a few bucks to spare, maybe consider helping out?


	4. Kids With Guns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie eats some food for thought on the nature of guts and glory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While fiddling with a sentence I didn't like I somehow pasted the entire chapter in two more times and had to delete it. Sooooo my apologies if you saw that mess. Hopefully it's fixed.

**Step zero to escaping zip ties is to control the position your hands are in when they go on, if at all possible. Allow the enemy to--**

Jamie snapped to attention at a sudden noise, and realized a second letter it was someone farting. The maglite between his teeth muffled his giggle for him before he managed to reign it in, which was convenient. He shifted and looked toward the door to the cooler, waited just to be sure. After a minute or two he was satisfied that flatulence was the most exciting thing happening, and so he went back to squinting, bleary-eyed, at the book in his hands.

**… that rifles are for hunting. Handguns are for self defense. Shotguns are fine, but always have a sidearm. They're faster.**

_ Note: Eyes on the front sight.  _ _ Front sight, _ _ you little bastards. _

_ Note 2: “never bring a knife to a gunfight” is a load of fucking bullshit. In a short-range encounter, you can-- _

He started when he felt his chin hit his chest, and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. Bad idea. The maglite wobbled in his mouth and pinched his lip against his teeth.

He winced and pulled it free to check for bleeding. A little, but not a big deal.

Jamie went back to reading.

_ … so if your rope is too long for the job, 1) congratulations, you have extra rope, stop bitching, 2) use a sheepshank knot to shorten it. Start by-- _

He kept zoning out.

**… and at a basic minimum, your bug out bag should include--**

Again.

**Never use a kick with full leg-extension higher than your opponent's knee.** _ You're not Jackie Fucking Chan. If they catch your leg you'll look like a dumbass before you die. _

And again.

_ In light of a recent boo-boo, I'm writing it down because you still don't get it: Wear. Shoes. You. Shits. _

_ You can jury-rig new ones with-- _

And again.

The notebook was technically common property. In theory, everyone had access to it, though in actual practice Maddie kept a closer eye on it than she did Trisha's ass. Everyone got to read it when she said they could, or said they had to. ‘Everyone’ was a broad term usually, but when Maddie said it, it was generally understood that it specifically meant ‘anyone who's not Jamie.’

Ben had been legendarily prepared for anything. That was what stuck out when you asked kids who couldn’t remember his face anymore to describe him: Ben knew everything. Ben was ready for anything.

That had included not coming home.

His entire survivalist encyclopedia was written down in a thick black book small enough to fit in a cargo pocket, and complete with articles and diagrams taped in. Jamie hadn't been sure at first which of the two sets of handwriting was Ben's. One was broad, bold, and messy; the other was small, plain, and precise. He hadn't been puzzled too long, because the latter directly addressed “you shits” and “little bastards” frequently.

It had also committed a page to a hand-drawn calendar and a list of birthdays. Several had asterisks next to them referencing a footnote.

_ *Doesn't remember. Use the day you found them. _

He'd stared at the line 

_ Jamie: Dec. 21* _

for two minutes and turned the page.

Jamie needed to read the book because he needed like  _ burning _ to leave the servo behind, and had an unfortunately very realistic outlook on his odds of making it on his own. He had to learn, so he had to filch the book very carefully from under the edge of Maddie’s mattress when she was sleeping.

The trouble was he could barely read two sentences without going cross-eyed with boredom. None of it was sticking.

“Caught ya, you little rat.”

Jamie shot up too fast and cracked his head on the lip of the sales counter he'd been hiding behind. The impact snapped his teeth painfully against the hard casing of the maglite, and the yelp that wrenched his jaw open again let it fall with a clatter.

The book fell with it when he threw his hands up towards the new injuries, and he grazed his own eyeball with his little finger.

It was a very eventful half a second.

When he collected himself enough to look past the tears in his vision at Maddie, she was holding the book and his flashlight, so there went the plausible deniability. “I went for a piss and saw ya left it out,” he said, because he didn't need plausibility; he'd still deny everything. “Shame on you, Maddie. Shame _. _ All we got left of dear ol’ What’s-His-Nuts and whattaya do? Leave it where Lewis can try to chew on it. Fuckin’  _ shame _ .

“I rescued it though, so. Ya know.  _ You’re welcome  _ for that _ ,”  _ he added haughtily, rising to his feet. The more of the impromptu lecture he got out of his mouth without a fist cramming it back down his throat, the more he warmed to it and forgot he was lying. “No need to thank me, though, just doin’ me fair share for the family. Well. You can thank me a  _ bit. _ ”

Maddie stood with her arms crossed. It was a pose made slightly awkward with both hands full and the generous bounty of puberty in the way ( _ boy _ had she filled out) but she had a lot of practice with it. It was a good pose.

“Ya done?”

“Mmmmmnoooo-- Yeah. No...” Jamie pondered the question. “... nah, yeah. I'm done.”

She whacked him over the head with the maglite.

Jamie never kept a good registry of the words emigrating out of his mouth, but he was pretty sure that somewhere in there, his head clutched between his hands, he must have called Maddie some good ones. 'Clitnose’ jumped the border. 'Assgoblin’ made a run for the promised land. He knew ‘tyrant’ had found ironic freedom because it rang in his own ears on the tail end of the tirade, and Maddie had a pleased and imperious look on her face.

“It's nice t’be recognized, but I'm a bread and circuses kinda tyrant, thank you,” she sniffed.

“The shit’s that mean?” Jamie spat, rubbing his abused noggin. She'd been reading old textbooks books again. He wanted to burn them all.

“It means I keep the people happy under my iron fist.”

“I look  _ happy _ to you?”

“No,” Maddie admitted without remorse, “but you mighta noticed there aren't any other freedom fighters. Where does that leave you?” Her fingers tapped against the spine of the book as she looked him over. “I can't remember the last line you didn't jump over and wag your ass at us from the other side--”

“It's a nice ass,” Jamie said reasonably. “It deserves t’be admired.”

“--and I still don't get  _ why _ ya always have to make trouble.” Maddie calmly set the book and the flashlight down on the counter and leaned her hip against it, favoring him with a look like…

He couldn't place it. Somewhere in the back of his brain was a fuzzy clot of memories and that expression rippled through them like a full-body shudder, brought them to life. It didn't summon up a specific image. Moments, maybe. Sharp details that didn't matter, like the needlepoint kittens on an ugly sweater, and the taste of orange gelatin, and the particular pattern of a broken porcelain figurine. Indistinct faces of people who might have given him the same look but no matter which way he turned the pictures in his head, they remained smudgy, featureless impressions.

It was a grown-up look, he knew, but he couldn't fit it to a context that made sense of what it meant. He wanted to punch it off Maddie's face because she was sixteen and he was twelve-ish and she had no right giving him a grown-up look. His fingers bunched into his palms like he might, but he didn't.

“We need you,” Maddie said slowly, carefully, like she had something she meant to say but she was stringing it together as she went. “But ya haven't really made much of an effort to get along with anyone. Ya haven't ever really tried to fit in.”

Fuck he hadn't. He was still here, wasn't he? He talked to Lewis sometimes, if you could call it conversation -- Lewis had a very limited set of interests, and boy was he ever interested in them. And Jamie took the piss out of Tina, which was a two-way street, and he was fairly certain that Tina calling him girls’ names meant she liked him.

Trisha prodded him with needles and thread often enough that he had to assume they were friends, otherwise it would be awkward.

Maddie thumped him on the chin and he realized she hadn't stopped talking, but he'd stopped listening. He wasn't sorry. “Jamie. What’d I say?”

Jamie blinked at her. “Blah blah blah I'm a figjam cunt?” he ventured.

He expected to get hit, welcomed it even, but, “Case in point,” she said, and she just looked at him and sighed like now her tits had grown in she was his put-upon mother.

Oh.

Now he recognized that look.

He noticed the stinging in his knuckles a second before he realized he really had punched her.

It was easy to forget sometimes how tough Maddie was because she was pudgy and she spent more time reading and telling people what to do than actually  _ doing _ anything. Jamie remembered it when she sprang back up off the floor faster than a fat girl ought to and tackled him into the side of the counter. He hollered and scratched and bit -- he wasn't too proud not to if it worked -- but she snatched up his wrists in one meaty hand and leaned her weight into him until his bones creaked, shoved his face into the biting edge of a sagging wooden shelf.

She punched him and kept on punching. The air in his lungs decided it wanted no part of the confrontation; it got the hell out of Dodge and stayed gone. The hard-packed sounds of her knuckles slamming into his ribs and his face recalled a man hacking a dog apart with a machete in the afternoon sun.

For the first three impacts all he thought was feral static and an impotent instinct to fight back. Punches four through eight were mostly met with 'ow’ and ‘fuck.’ By the time he lost count, fight or flight had thrown in the towel because it wasn't going anywhere, and he could almost string together an entire thought but wished he couldn't.

He kept wondering if this was the part where she killed him.

She'd gotten a real good rhythm going when he'd stopped squirming but her momentum petered out with her force. She threw every scrap of energy she had into one final jab and Jamie thought maybe he laid there ten years before he realized no more were coming.

Maddie sat on him a little longer, panting from the effort, before she let go of his wrists and climbed off his legs. His bony hips ground sharply against the ancient linoleum when her weight shifted him; Jamie only noticed because it was different than the uniform throbbing under the rest of his skin. She’d focused her fire but he could swear she'd pummeled every inch. He couldn't tell where the hot feeling of bruises forming really ended.

They sat there for a minute. Jamie was laid out half-sitting with his face and shoulder braced against the collapsed shelving. He shifted enough to flop down flat on his back, but the sting in his cheek when he pulled it free suggested the ragged edge of plywood had cut it open.

“What’re you looking at? Go back to bed, ya shits,” Maddie growled. Jamie turned his head even though it sent a spike through the back of his skull; one eye watered and the other was already swelling shut, but he could make out the blobby silhouette a cluster of kids made. The noise had drawn them out like scavengers, and it was kinda funny, except that he sorta hated them. He couldn't tell who was there, but it wasn't anyone who gave a shit, clearly, because they didn't say a damn thing before they shuffled off back to bed.

When they were gone, Maddie spoke again, and he laid there and listened because he had nothing better to do, really. “Don't ya ever come the raw prawn again, Jamie. Don't ya ever.” His ribs could be broken but he already knew he would. Fire was hot; it didn't stop him touching it. He would because he could. He would because it was better than being a ghost in his own home.

Call it a "home."

“You could fit if ya tried, maybe. But ya need us more than we need you. Remember that.”

Maddie got up but he stayed put. Plenty of time to mull things over right here.

After a little bit he felt himself being manhandled and didn't fight it. He didn't have to open his sore eyes to know it was Trisha and her firm hands, sent out by Maddie to make sure he wouldn't be a corpse come evening. Trisha didn't say anything, but she seldom did. Not when it was him.

He let her move him around and poke and prod him, and he thought about how he needed the servo kids like he needed another bruise.

If he was alone, he'd rather be  _ alone. _

 

* * *

 

“You still don't look too, uuuh...” Lewis trailed off more or less tactfully, idly fingering the pull tab on a can of Vienna sausages. Jamie grinned even though his whole face protested.

“Dunno. I think it's a good look for me, mate,” he said, turning his head one way and then the other for display. One of them was bound to be his good side.

Lewis have him a puzzled look. “Ya think, uh... because we don't got a proper mirror,” he mumbled thoughtfully.

Jamie laughed, mostly because he was so damn sincere about it. Lewis had good face, and he could sew up even the most spectacularly blown-out trouser seat good as new, and he could make gourmet meals out of reasonably-expired  _ anything _ , and that was pretty much the whole sum of Things He Had Going For Him. Not listed: the wits of a brick and about as much subtlety. He didn't have the heart to make jabs at people on purpose, but he routinely talked around a mouthful of foot anyway, and his serene obliviousness to it was a riot. Well, Jamie thought so, anyway. Poor Lewis probably tied him weekly for thumps to the head, but people thumped him more gently, at least, because they all knew he was just thick.

“Yeah, nah, I'm setting a trend. I'm a trend-setter. Purple’s a good color.”

“It's more yellow-y now, I think,” Lewis said slowly, squinting at the bruises and taking serious stock of their shades and hues.

“Even better!” Jamie shoved another trap into his pack. “Yellow’s an  _ even better _ color.”

The swelling had long since gone down by the time Jamie came up for supply team rotation. He still ached more places than he didn't, so he took his time loading his gear into his repurposed burlap sack. Lewis was on permanent kitchen detail; he kept meticulous inventory of the pantry, and took care to dole out relatively balanced rations to the teams.

He put the tin of sausages in Jamie's pack, nestled between nasty metal traps. He sat a moment watching Jamie count his toys one more time, then suddenly rose and crossed the stockroom to the cabinet.

Jamie watched him hesitantly extract a pack of fried potato skins. Lewis stared at them for a moment as though he'd just found, to his surprise, a dead baby in his hands. He grappled with himself; he went to put them back, then took them out again, rinse and repeat. Finally he made up his mind and scurried back to Jamie's side, pushed them gently into his pack.

He looked sheepishly at Jamie. “Don't tell anyone. They're extra. Don't tell, okay?” he fretted.

Jamie grinned and shrugged. “My lips're sealed.” 

Lewis stared at him anxiously as though they were co-conspirators in a murder and it was just now occurring to him that Jamie's mouth was bigger than the rest of him. Finally he nodded. “You should get going. Tina doesn't like waiting.”

Jamie pulled the drawstring on his pack tight, then drew the chain he'd affixed to it for a strap across his chest. “You're confused, mate. I go with the Daves.”

Lewis shook his head. “No. The Daves went with Kunal last time.”

Jamie felt his face reluctantly scrunch up in confusion, but before he could ask, John popped his head through the door and glared at them. “What's the hold up, ladies? Sun’s almost down. Get your ass moving, Rat Trap.”

Jamie gave Lewis a friendly knuckle to the shoulder before pushing to his feet. His only goodbye to John was to briefly and cheerfully extol the virtues of pissing upwind.

Tina was indeed waiting outside, alongside Circe. It was not the Daves. Was Kunal normally on Tina's team? Jamie couldn't remember, because he never paid attention to things like that. He just knew he always went with the Daves, because that was the only relevant information as him and supply teams went.

The break from the norm was mostly baffling, but not bad per se, because Tina was a dag. Circe less so, but you couldn't have everything. 

“Done with your makeup, Jessica?” Tina teased, good-natured(ish) even though her right leg jiggled anxiously. Jamie blew her a kiss and batted his eyelashes. Circe rolled her eyes at him, but Tina snorted and jerked her head for him to follow.

The bike shed was already unlocked for them. Tau's team had returned triumphantly with a pair of bicycles a couple of years back, dug up from the rubble of someone's garage. They hadn't been usable at the time, but they were reliable after a lot of repairs. Jamie had studied them and scrapped together most of a third bicycle, but the fiddly part was finding a second tire for it, so meanwhile he'd taken the one spare they had and made a tandem of one of the original bikes.

To his dismay, he was stuck on the spare seat behind Circe. He'd have preferred to sit behind Tina if he had to, or ideally he'd have the single bike to himself, and he bullshitted what he felt was a pretty convincing argument that the girls should ride together on account of both being girls. It was more symmetrical that way.

“The shit’s ‘symmetrical’ mean?” Tina laughed. “Third wheel gets third seat, Janet. I'm a lone wolf.”

They rode towards the dying twilight, following landmarks instead of the heavily annotated map in Circe's pack. They knew the best paths for staying out of sight of the routes the people from the town -- the people who called themselves Junkers -- used, and they knew all the spots that had been picked clean or were too risky. The trips got longer as nearby goldmines got slimmer, and they'd be out for a few days.

It was cold as shit and winter hadn’t even taken its shoes off and made itself comfortable yet, but that was a good thing. Most of the Junkers switched to daytime hunts when the cold settled in; it was cool enough in the day to get away with it, and too damn bitter to bother at night. The kids kept the same nocturnal schedule year-round and made do with whatever weather they got, because it was a fair trade for better odds of coming home in one piece. You could share body heat, but you couldn't cuddle out a bullet.

Circe wasn't much for humoring Jamie's attempts at conversation, which was, by his estimation, at least ten times worse form in this situation than at any other time. If he was going to spend days downwind and staring up her ass she could at least shoot the breeze with him to even it out. Her silence didn't stop him trying, and at length, but he was still vaguely offended by her poor manners.

Tina took the front by a few meters, her gun hanging ready and loaded in a holster fixed to her handlebars. Even on the occasions that she hung back within talking distance she didn't pay Jamie much mind. More than Circe, certainly, but still not much. She was hyper-focused on the horizon, scanning through the dark every which way. Theoretically she was looking out for danger and promising targets. In practice everyone knew that whatever loot she brought back, Tina considered any run that she didn't get to perforate a bitch at least half a failure. Which was basically all of them, because Circe wasn't into playing the hero, but Tina had big dreams.

She joked around with him sparingly, but inevitably she'd shush him so she could listen for engines, or push ahead again to shouting-only distance, and he wasn't dumb enough to shout. Altogether he had too much time to consider his position.

He had always gone with the Daves.

Supply teams went in threes on the logic that if one of them died, there'd still be two to watch each other's backs. You just had to pray only one died, if any. They'd done well enough so far; there had been too many close calls and injuries to count, but in three years only Theodore and Emily had followed Ben into the Great Fucking-Off-Forever. The bikes helped, and the map, and the night.

Maddie kept the teams balanced for strengths: someone quick, preferably with good aim; someone smart, preferably with sharp eyes; and someone handy, preferably with at least two brain cells to rub together for friction, but since Jamie held that spot on his own team, the Daves cited 'beggars can't be choosers.’

As long as they were well rounded as a group it didn't much matter who the individuals were. Still, unless someone was too sick or injured when their turn came up, the crews tended to be consistent to keep rotation fair. The bar for 'too sick or injured to pull your weight’ was pretty high, though. You’d better be at death's door.

The Daves had gone out last week without him. He wasn't surprised he hadn't noticed, because there were plenty of factors there. His schedule was packed with sulking. Time was a sort of tedious detail that happened to other people. Dave #1  _ and  _ Dave #2 were whackers whose dicks could go ahead and rot off.

Mostly he couldn't figure why he'd been swapped on rotation with Kunal if his injuries hadn't justified it.

The first night passed slowly with nothing to do but think. They stopped now and then to rest, stretch, and sip water at intervals determined by Circe, who also used the time to study the map under a maglite. Even if they knew the way, she said, she should check the map when she could. It was an old atlas marked with pen all over. Th e oldest marks were black ink doled out in a familiar tight, unadorned hand, with a neat legend drawn in the corner for the symbols that had been added: bug out locations, Junker camps and routes, vantage points, water holes, exhausted looting spots.

A little before dawn Circe told them it was time to head towards a safe campsite. She directed them toward a precarious jumble of boulders that looked ready to collapse on each other, but they hadn't for longer than any of the kids had been alive. A little lean-to had been built wedged between two rocks that must have weighed tons, providing extra shade and camouflage. They stashed their bikes amid the rubble and sat down to eat their meager dinner as the sky turned pale on the edges, and Jamie volunteered for first visit watch because he was too antsy to sleep, and he wanted to sit with the sunrise.

The night sky studded with stars was pretty, but it was about all he ever saw. There was something cathartic about the way  it bled out like a Junker shot it, like it got its head caught in a metal trap; rivers of red and gold streaked and blotted the horizon over a distant plateau and soaked into everything.

They slept in shifts and hunkered down in the lean-to when they were done. Tina was willing to talk to him now; they bantered back and forth while she pulled her gun apart and put it back together again and again, faster and faster, like she was trying to wear her fingerprints into every battered piece. Even with nothing else to do the day came and went quickly with winter breathing down its neck, and they were off again at twilight heading inexorably west.

Jamie almost missed the jittery downtime in the camp when travel meant being alone with his head again.

 

* * *

 

 

A dirt road wound through the bush ahead, emptying out of a canyon in a jagged red rock wall to the south. They saw headlights coming through the canyon in single file even before they started to hear the distant rumble of the vehicles attached. Jamie counted the lights and tried to gauge what kinds of rigs there were from the configuration, but it might as well have been a swarm of especially ornery fireflies for all he could tell. They were keeping a steady pace, at least by Junker standards, not really rushing it.

Tina locked onto them like a vicious Pomeranian thinking about trying its chances against a pack of wolves. It took a few tries for Circe to catch her attention and call her back close. Once she'd managed it, she signaled for Jamie to roll to a stop with her. Tina glared and circled them.

“What're ya doin’?”

“They'll cross that distance faster.” Circe shook her shaggy dark hair and pointed ahead to the dirt road two klicks away. The Junkers were still another good ten klicks at least from the point where their perpendicular paths converged, but they weren't on bicycles. “Even if we cross way before 'em it's too flat out here, and the moon's out. They’ll see us. We should get behind some rocks and let 'em pass.”

Tina kept circling, agitated. “Supply runs’d be faster if we had us one of them big trucks. Or bikes with motors on.”

“And more dangerous," Circe snapped. Jamie had a sense that they'd had this argument before. Obviously Tina had never won it because she still didn't have her motorbike and she also wasn't dead, but much like her big dreams of killing Junkers she wouldn't let the idea loose now she'd had it, no matter how many times Circe talked her down. “They’re bigger, louder targets in the dark and ya know it. We don't even know how to drive those things. Prob’ly kill ourselves tryin’.”

“I bet Jamie could figure it out.” Tina grinned at him, her crooked teeth stark in the cold light. “Jamie’s got ways with anythin’ that's metal and moves. Ya wanna get your hands on a big rig, Jamie?”

Tina was having a lend of him, stroking his ego to get her way, and he knew it. It was working though. He grinned right back at her. “Think me traps could pop one of their wheels?” he wondered aloud.

“And then ya can't drive it, jackass,” Circe huffed.

“If they're half smart they carry spares and tools.” Tina didn't even look at Circe. She had eyes only for Jamie, and he liked that a whole lot. She was staring at him intensely, still circling them slowly like a buzzard Her brown eyes were black and bottomless in the dark and her ginger hair was haloed white under the moon. She looked like a wild thing, small and wicked sharp and rusted, and she was looking at him like maybe he could be a kindred spirit if he just said the word.

He nodded at her.

“ _Knew_ you were the right sort, Jamie,” Tina crowed. “Let's go--”

“Jamie's not going anywhere, because  _ I'm  _ not going anywhere.” Circe dug her heels into the dirt and turned her handlebars sideways.

“Rack off, ya knocker.” Tina skidded to a halt beside him and slid off the seat to straddle the frame. “Hop on, Jamie, we got no more time to dawdle.”

“Don't you dare, Rat.” Circe turned around and reached for him, aimed to grab him by his ragged poncho and hold him onto the tandem with her, but he twisted away and rolled off his seat to hop on Tina's instead. No sooner had he settled than Tina sat in his lap, and a little thrill ran through him. Before Circe could try and stop them he helped push off, holding onto Tina's waist. Tina bent forward over her handlebars and pedaled furiously.

The argument had taken long enough that as they approached it became clear they wouldn't have time to set a proper trap before the Junkers were upon them. They would be spotted before they made the road, and they'd maybe have a bit of breathing room to start with, but what distance they had would dwindle fast if the Junkers hit the gas and chased them.

Jamie was already having second thoughts, but he couldn't have stopped Tina's momentum if he wanted to.

He didn't want to. She was babbling excitedly at him as she pedaled. “I knew ya were a good one, Jamie, knew it when ya made that damn beautiful rat trap. Fuck Frankie and fuck Maddie and fuck the Junkers and fuck 'em all. No more scraping by under that bitch’s fat thumb, we're gonna show ‘em what we're made of.”

“Innards, mostly,” Jamie giggled nervously.

“So’s everyone. I'll show you.” She cackled like a murder of crows, and something warm spread down Jamie's face and neck and settled in his chest.

Tina sped them towards the dirt road with only half a kilometer of space between them and the Junker convoy. Jamie craned his neck and squinted at the headlights but he still couldn't make out what was past them; the lead vehicle looked taller than some of what was behind it, with a string of utility lights mounted atop the cab. A horn blared, and then another, and the hungry growl of an engine opening up scratched across the base of Jamie's skull and clawed his spine. He gripped Tina tighter as she tore them across the road, and the front of the convoy sped up and curved its path to follow.

“What's our plan?” Jamie asked. He stared unblinking at the lights behind them, dazzled and terrified.

“I'll lead ‘em over bumps and rocks to slow 'em down while you try and pop one of their tires!”

The bike jittered over loose rocks and dips in the dirt, and dry scrubby plants that bit Jamie's bare ankles as they passed. He pulled his bag around his side. The vehicle was gaining ground, and he caught glimpses of another following it, but the rest pulled to a stop on the road and waited.

Tina aimed them for a hazard of bigger rocks to slow the pursuit down; their bike weaved between low boulders and over broken stones and Jamie struggled to set the mechanism of a miniature spike trap one-handed while holding onto Tina for dear life. He twisted to see the thing bearing down on him. This close he could make out that it was -- a Jeep, he thought? -- blocky and stubby and sitting tall on fat tires. He could hear the high grind of a dirt bike chewing up the ground, and saw it flashing wide around the side of the Jeep, moving to circle them.

Despite having to bump and bounce over the rocks in its way the Jeep barely slowed; it was maybe a dozen meters off and gaining ground. Jamie couldn't look past the blinding glare of headlamps and off-road lights to see the tires well, so when he threw the trap he misjudged, and it landed just a little off from the path of the front left wheel. He cussed.

“Try again!” Tina told him. She was panting from strain, but she hadn't slacked off in the slightest. He could feel her heart beating rabbit-fast under his fingers, and the damp of sweat soaking into her shirt, but she laughed long and loud at the thrill of it and it made him giggle a little too through the stifling certainty that they were going to die.

He pulled another cool hunk of calming metal from his pack, one of his rat traps. He kissed it for luck before he wrenched its arm open and set the trigger.

A particularly jarring jump over a big rock nearly took the trap from his hand. He held on but wished he hadn't; it snapped shut on his little finger and he felt the crunch of bone. Tina mocked his scream. “Suck it up,” she panted, and he saw the flash of the pistol in her hand, wrist braced against the handlebars as she traced the movement of the dirt bike coming around front. “There’s  _ worse _ coming.”

Jamie choked down his sobs of pain. It wasn't the first time he'd broken a finger. It wasn't even the first time he'd broken  _ that _ finger. That didn't make it hurt less.

He took deep, steadying breaths and clamped his thighs around Tina's to hold on while he brought his other hand around to open the trap again. Blood dripped down his shaking wrist. The trap had crushed his little finger right at the middle knuckle, flattening it to half its width. Above the break his finger bent back at an awkward angle. Jamie felt sick looking at it but the satisfying pop of Tina's pistol firing at the dirt bike kept him steady. He set the trigger again and twisted around, panting and nauseous.

The Jeep had gained a lot of ground. He was staring down the glaring eyes of its headlamp, could feel the groan of its engine across his skin, thought he could even feel the heat.

Jamie lowered his eyes and dropped the trap to the ground. The impact itself triggered it, and it leapt into the air like a thing alive and bit into--

The sound of the front right tire blowing out made him scream. He shut his eyes and threw his arms around Tina. He could feel her breathless cackle all the way into his ribs.

Jamie heard the crash of metal on stone and saw lights flicker through his eyelids; when he dared to open them he saw the Jeep had jumped into the air with the force of its tire exploding into ripped rubber and bare, rusted metal. It had rolled and ended up on its side, propped half-up against a boulder, and didn't move.

Tina stopped them, her breathing ragged, and looked around wildly. “I lost 'im. Eyes open, Jamie.” They could still hear the dirt bike running, but the boulders they'd ridden into had gotten higher, studded here and there with tall spires of twisted metal stabbed into the earth. It all built up and up over their heads into a craggy hill that looked like teeth against the night sky. They couldn't see the bike, and the sound of its motor bounced off the rocks from all directions.

Tina dropped the kickstand and checked her magazine. She climbed off of Jamie and looked towards the Jeep. “C'mon, before he bails up on us. They must have more guns. Bigger, I bet. They like big.”

Clutching his bloody hand to his chest, Jamie followed. The Jeep's engine was still running and the lights made choppy shadows of the rubble as they picked their way toward it, quickly as the uneven ground allowed. They couldn't tell if the driver had survived. Tina was shuddering with exhaustion and adrenaline but there wasn't a whiff of fear on her as she picked her way toward the Jeep, gun forward and eyes scanning for their other pursuer. Jamie wrapped a bandage from his pack around his injured finger and secured it against the ring finger next to it. His hands trembled violently, and he jumped when the dirt bike noise got louder then quieter.

Following Tina's lead he crept low against the rocks, staying out of the light and the line of sight from the Jeep's windows.

Tina tiptoed carefully towards the driver's side, its big wheels spinning impotently in the air three feet off the ground, digging trenches in loose gravel on the passenger side. There was no door, just a harness of straps over a gaping hole that yawned up at the sky.

She climbed up onto the Jeep carefully, her weight barely enough to wiggle its mass. From his vantage crouched on the ground Jamie could make out the driver's arm caught limp in the safety harness just as Tina announced triumphantly that he was dead.

She grinned down at Jamie. “What'd I tell you? We're all made of--”

The shotgun blast from the passenger’s side tore her open. It didn't actually look like slow motion; her grin exploded into wet pieces of brain and jawbone pretty abruptly. The slow part was his mind catching up to it, processing what he was seeing even after the warm spray raining down on his face had stopped.

Tina's body tumbled sideways off her perch on the fender, hit the spinning rear wheel and shot a few feet back like a ragdoll before crumpling to the dirt.

The gears in Jamie's brain finally stopped grinding against each other and kicked back into motion, and he whipped around on his heel to make a break for the bicycle.

He would realize later that the dirt biker must have dismounted to ambush them when he saw the Jeep go down and Tina creeping towards it. Circe was right, a motor vehicle made a louder, bigger target for a girl with a gun, and the Junker must have figured that out too.

In the moment, however, all that registered was his sudden impact with a body much bigger than his, and the gleam of a pistol in one hand.

The latter cracked down against his head, and he stopped thinking for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that cliffhanger, I want to take a peek at what Roadhog's up to at this phase of his life, so we'll be checking in with him next chapter. Which means I have to ACTUALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT HE'S DOING because I'm still bullshitting this as I go.
> 
> I'm still writing this on my phone and nothing is beta'd, so bear with me.
> 
> As before, plot prompts are totally welcome. Thanks for reading!


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